


these violent delights

by picard_jackie



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Mirakuru Serum (Arrow TV 2012), Mirakuru Slade Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picard_jackie/pseuds/picard_jackie
Summary: You love this boy, and you love this girl, and they love each other, but they don’t love you the way you love them.A Slade Wilson character analysis through to the sinking of the Amazo, because I love him your honor.
Relationships: Oliver Queen & Shado & Slade Wilson, Oliver Queen & Slade Wilson, Oliver Queen/Shado, Sara Lance/Oliver Queen, Shado & Slade Wilson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	these violent delights

You love this boy, and you love this girl, and they love each other, but they don’t love you the way you love them. You are a man who has trusted and been betrayed more than once, but you always fall into the same trap. You trust them. With your life, with your secrets, with your sly, hidden smile that only they can draw out these days.

They aren’t really a boy and a girl. At least not anymore. He was a boy when he came to you, but sometime in the past 6 months, he has grown up. Maybe when he killed his first man. Maybe when he first had to decide if he wanted to be a good man or an alive one. Maybe it was gradual, and every time you struck him with an escrima stick to prevent him from being struck by a bullet later, he was maturing before your eyes. Your violence and love (is exchanging violence for love always to be your fate?) turning him into a man you would be proud to call brother.

She hasn’t been a girl for a long time, maybe since her father disappeared off the face of the Earth, maybe when she found out what really happened to him, maybe when she became a pawn in a madman’s plan. Or maybe far before. Because the truth is, for all you know this man and this woman to the depths of their souls, what makes them tick, what drives them to survive, you don’t really know them. You don’t know their histories. You know who they are on this island, perhaps their basest, truest selves, but not who they wish to be. Who they chose to be when they had options, not whoever (or whatever) it took to survive.

But even though you’re in hell, in purgatory, this man and this woman know you like no one before. Because while Lian Yu might have scraped away their real selves to reveal the survivors underneath, it has only revealed who you knew you were all along. The playboy and the lawyer might kill to survive when pushed, but the soldier revels in it. You chose this path long before you crashed here with a man you considered a partner, an equal. Lian Yu has scraped back your layers of violence for country to make clear it was only every violence for violence’s sake. The only thing you ever knew, the only way you knew to love.

But maybe in purgatory, even this woman and this man with their hope and kindness can learn to love you for all your gory violence. Maybe violence for love can be enough when it’s the only way, not just the preferred way.

The woman dies. Shado, Shado who was never yours, Shado the lawyer, Shado Yao Fei’s daughter, Shado the strong, Shado the lovely, Shado the kind. Kind above all else.

But first, you die. You die in agony, looking into the eyes of the man and the woman that you love and hate yourself that you won’t be able to protect them any longer. They will have to survive in this hell without you and you can only help you trained the man well enough he can protect her and himself. She never needed your help, but you’re devastated you won’t be able to provide it any longer all the same. You die, and your man and your woman hold you all the while.

You are alive. (But kind, lovely Shado is dead, though you don’t yet know it). You scream back to life, alone in a frigid submarine, but so warm inside. The rage you have harbored in your heart your whole life is a burning fury now. How could you ever have believed you were angry before? This fire, this rage could consume cities, raze the whole planet, all to help you achieve your aims. The only thought in your head is for the man and the woman that you love so much it might destroy you. They believe you dead and you have to save them. This fire will help.

You run. You are faster than ever before, the fire inside pushing you, no, pulling you to your family. And that’s what they are, how did you not realize? This man and this woman, though they don’t love you the way they love each other, they are your family. They have sheltered with you, laughed with you, hunted with you. They belong with (to) you, and you must save them. So you run and run, following their tracks, and once closer, the sounds of sobs and a gun shot.

Your mind is blank. All that matters is destroying the men who dare threaten the man and the woman. You tear into them as if they were papier-mâché. Their bodies crumpling from the force of your rage. They can hit you, beat you, shoot at you, but it would not matter. The blood on your hands is warm, but the fire inside you is hotter and you revel in the fear you see in their eyes before you crush them. The fire burns brighter and brighter, clouding your vision. The men are finally dead, and Shado and Oliver are safe. You have saved your family.

And it all comes crashing down. Two bodies lay in the dirt. Your family lays in the dirt, but the man seems fine. The woman (kind, lovely Shado) is not. There’s blood on her face and she is crumpled. This is a nightmare, your nightmare. You clutch her to you and the blood that once felt so sweet on your skin is now terrible. The worst of fates to touch blood when it is hers and it is outside her body where it was never meant to be.

Her blood mixes with the blood that wept from your eyes when you died and lived again. And now you have died once more, because this woman, this kind, lovely woman that you have loved and protected and laughed with for months is dead. And you look at the man, the brother who you trained and molded into the warrior he can now claim to be and can only ask why.

The man who killed Shado still lives and you cannot rest. The fire inside you is constantly stoked by the memory of Shado’s blood on her face and yours. By the empty look in the man’s face as he lay on the ground that day. You and he are in accord on that, that Shado was the best of the both of you and without her you are nothing.

So you plot and scheme and rage, wanting nothing more than to kill the man who killed the woman. You endure the presence of the traitor who worked with that monster, because she is your best chance at revenge. Sara, the snake in the grass, will never be part of your family, but for the sake of Shado’s revenge, and for your brother’s past, you can ignore your desire to spill her blood for now.

Oliver, your brother, helps you realize that the fire inside you isn’t safe, isn’t normal, is burning you from the inside out. For his sake you try to tame the beast that thrashes in your chest. And for the sake of Shado’s memory that Oliver invokes, for the kind, lovely woman who wanted to escape this island with you and Oliver. For her, you can try to bank the inferno inside you back to the warm kindling it was before Mirakuru, before Ivo, before she died.

A plan is devised, a good plan, one that will allow you your revenge while keeping the small sliver of a good man inside you alive as well. One that will allow you to go home, to your boy, to your Joe. Though you had dreamed of introducing your new family to your boy, you can still go home and bring your brother with you. Your family might be smaller, but it still exists, you can still have the love that you have fought and bled for.

So you board the freighter. You clutch the traitor tight to you and fight the winds to breach the ship that holds the man who stole what was most precious to you. And you finally have revenge in sights, the fire inside you might finally be put out when the last scraps of your humanity, of your family are incinerated.

Your brother, your family, the man you trained and loved and saved time and time again betrayed you. And what’s worse, he betrayed sweet Shado to her death. He chose the traitor, the sickly allure of the past over the shining promise of the future. Shado died, and she died thinking herself alone and unloved.

You blame yourself for keeping this wretched boy alive long enough to betray your Shado, but the fire inside you can only be sated now with this boy’s blood on your hands. You have always exchanged violence for love and now love for violence and this man you once called brother will die at your hands. The only question is when and how much he will suffer beforehand. How you can make him feel a fraction of the pain Shado and yourself have felt.

You capture this once boy, once man, once brother and hold him in a cell. The flame inside you has taken another face. Your sweet Shado has finally rejoined you and she bays for his blood. You brand him, making him carry the weight of his sins for all to see. Just as Shado never leaves you, she will never leave him.

This boy handles torture as well as to be expected by a man who was trained by yourself and Shado. His eyes hold little life and his lack of reaction only burns you brighter. You ache for his screams, for him to thrash and roll under the pain of your torment. You want him to feel the same fire that you do every waking moment. You wish to share this one last bond with a man who would have been brother before ridding yourself and Shado of his existence forever.

But your plans, whispered to you by strong, fierce Shado do not come to fruition. The traitor returns and finally dies. And if she couldn’t die by your hands to make Oliver suffer that much more, at least she is dead and within his view when it happens. Your freighter explodes and if you can’t enact your plan to create more like you, you can still kill the boy who killed your beloved.

He is a child batted about by your rage. You taught him everything he knows and with the Mirakuru inside you he is a match faced with an inferno. You toy with him, promising you will destroy everything and all he loves. He would not love Shado the way she deserved, so he does not deserve love at all. He will die knowing that he could not save them and condemned them with his callous disregard for the one he professed to love. He will die in agony and the fire inside you will finally abate. You will be left with the imprint of Shado in your mind and you can at last rest knowing you have done right by her.

You die and live again. The cruel fates intervened once more to save the boy who did not deserve their favor. That undeserving boy who lived through a boat wreck, through Yao Fei’s caustic teachings, through Billy Wintergreen’s torture, through Fyers’s ambition, has lived where strong, kind Shado died.

You taunted and prodded him, pushing every button you knew he had. Invoked his long lost family, the girl whose picture he wields like a talisman, begged him to finish this and kill you to release you from the fire that rages inside you. And he failed in even this, failed you like he failed Shado, restrained and beaten though you were. He stabbed you through the eye, but the Mirakuru would not allow you even this release. The whirling blaze inside you burns and burns. It takes (lovely, strong) Shado’s face. She calls to you, chastising and begging in equal measures to remind you of the debt you owe her.

For Shado, you will rise out of this watery grave and avenge her. You will bide your time but know all the while that destruction awaits him. He will die slowly, agonizingly, knowing that you and your lovely Shado are the instruments of the fate that he sealed when he chose another over the family you had created together. Your love has turned to violence and your brother must look into your eyes and know he did this to himself. And with the wreckage of his life strewn at your feet, and Shado at your shoulder you will finally drive your sword through his heart. After all, you’re a man who keeps his promises.


End file.
